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EURIPIDES. What rags will suit you? Those in which old Oeneus, That hapless wight, went through his bitter conflict? DIKAIOPOLIS. Not Oeneus, no, but one still sorrier. EURIPIDES. Those of blind Phoenix? DIKAIOPOLIS. No, not Phoenix either; But another, more wretched still than Phoenix EURIPIDES. Whose sorry tatters can the fellow want? 'Tis Philoctetes' sure! You mean that beggar.
He got the Review and its editor into a scrape which shook the world at the time , by betraying Cabinet secrets to spite Lord Durham. His cries against his adversaries are as violent as the threats of Ajax in his tent, and as loud as the bellowings of Philoctetes at the mouth of his cave. Here is one instance out of a hundred: Another instance is as follows:
Well now, if Odysseus had cared to say a word for the end approved by the Stoics, he had plenty of chances when he brought back Philoctetes from Lemnos, when he sacked Troy, when he stopped the Greeks from giving up, or when he made his way into Troy by scourging himself and putting on rags bad enough for any Stoic. But no; he never said theirs was a fairer end.
He gave his quiver of arrows to his friend Philoctetes, charging him to collect his ashes and bury them, but never to make known the spot; and then he tore up, with his mighty strength, trees by the roots, enough to form a funeral pile, lay down on it, and called on his friend to set fire to it; but no one could bear to do so, till a shepherd consented to thrust in a torch.
If he bears it with courage, it is sufficient: that he should rejoice in it, I do not expect; for pain is, beyond all question, sharp, bitter, against nature, hard to submit to and to bear. Observe Philoctetes: We may allow him to lament, for he saw Hercules himself groaning loudly through extremity of pain on Mount Oeta.
Now, as the Trojans were fighting more bravely than before, under Deiphobus, a brother of Hector, the Greeks went to Calchas for advice, and he told them that they must send Ulysses and Diomede to bring Philoctetes the bowman from the isle of Lemnos.
It was in vain that Philoctetes shot his poisoned arrows, they fell back from the stone walls, or stuck in the palisades of wood above the walls, and the Greeks who tried to climb over were speared, or crushed with heavy stones. When night fell, they retreated to the ships and held a council, and, as usual, they asked the advice of the prophet Calchas.
She could hardly be packing already! He tried to give his attention to the notes he had been working at the day before. Presently he wanted a reference a line from the Philoctetes. 'The Lemnian fire' where on earth was the passage? He lifted his head instinctively.
He recollected some lines in the Ethics of Aristotle, quoted by the philosopher from an old poet, in which the poor outcast Philoctetes laments over his own stupid officiousness, as he calls it, which had been the cause of his misfortunes. Was he not a busybody too? Why could he not let well alone? Better men than he had lived and died in the English Church.
When they reappear, a violent attack of the malady prostrates Philoctetes who gives his bow to Neoptolemus, praying him to burn him and put an end to his agony.
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